Annual Application and Lottery Process

Prospective families must submit a new application each January for the upcoming school year. This application includes the annual $50 application fee and is valid for one school year (August through July).

Waitlist positions do not carry over from year to year. However, families who are currently on the waitlist are given priority in the annual lottery, which is used to fill available openings and establish the new waitlists.

Priority enrollment is offered before the general lottery in the following order:

  1. Currently enrolled children

  2. Children of Board Members

  3. Siblings of currently enrolled children

  4. Children of currently employed educators

  5. Siblings of GPCP alumni

After priority enrollment is complete, we use our annual lottery (held in January/February) to fill remaining openings and create waitlists for the upcoming school year.

Lottery Process

  • If the number of applications received by the application deadline exceeds the number of available spaces, a lottery will take place following the close of the application period. The lottery drawing is closed to the public and will be attended by the Operations Team. Families will be notified by email of the outcome of the lottery as soon as possible, but no later than the end of the month.

  • After available spaces have been filled through the lottery draw, the draw will continue to determine the order of placement on the waiting list. Waitlist families will be notified by email no later than the end of the month.

  • GPCP uses a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) weighted lottery system when filling available spots for the upcoming school year. Applicants are sorted into one of 4 applicant ‘buckets’: BIPOC families on our waitlist, new BIPOC family applicants, remaining families on our waitlist, and a general lottery of remaining applicants. GPCP aims to represent the diversity of the community we live in.

  • The first bucket pulled from is the BIPOC families on the waitlist, filling up to 40% of available spots.  Assuming the first bucket doesn’t fill 40% of available spots, the second bucket is pulled from. The second bucket contains new BIPOC family applicants (again, filling no more than 40% of the available spots). The third bucket drawn from is a lottery of the remaining families on the waitlist.  The last bucket drawn from is a random lottery of all remaining applicants.

Families are also welcome to apply to join our waitlists at any time throughout the school year. If openings occur, we fill those spots from the current waitlist.

Families must attend an information session before completing their application. Please see here for our next session.

Please direct any questions to registrar@gpcp.org